Daily Archives: January 3, 2010

### http://www.nzherald.co.nz 7:40 AM Tuesday Jan 5, 2010Dubai opens world’s tallest building
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Dubai opened the world’s tallest skyscraper overnight, and in a surprise move renamed the gleaming glass-and-metal tower Burj Khalifa in a nod to the leader of neighbouring Abu Dhabi – the oil-rich sheikdom which came to its rescue during the financial meltdown.
A lavish presentation witnessed by Dubai’s ruler and thousands of onlookers at the base of the tower said the building was 828 metres (2717 ft) tall.Read more

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Surroundings fairly mundane, why not fly a chopper or a plane rather than construct the world’s tallest building. The logic escapes me, or possibly it escapes the investors.

[I went up in a cage to the open roof deck of the Transco Tower in Houston when the tower was still under construction – at that stage the building had been topped with its beacon. The Transco (now known as Williams Tower) was designed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, in association with Houston-based Morris-Aubry Architects. The building was originally named for its major tenant, Transco Energy corporation. At 64 storeys and 277 metres (909 ft) above the ground level when built in 1983, it was the world’s tallest skyscraper outside of a city’s central business district. Just nothing compared to the Burj Khalifa.]

This video gives you any wind effects or vertigo you didn’t have, and prepares you for a career in tower cleaning:

ImreDubai 31 December 2009
Video by Imre Solt on the top of the Burj Khalifa’s spire, with Dony Chacko and Stuart Morgans. Australian company CoxGomyl is now commissioning the final systems on the building, a total of 18 machines have been delivered and the higest operating building maintenance units (BMU) in the world working at 715 metres.

It takes more than eight weeks to clean all 26,000 windows.

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Fact Sheet – Burj Dubai [written before the name change]

Currently the world’s tallest building and tallest man-made structure, Burj Dubai is at the centre of Downtown Burj Dubai, the flagship mega-project of Emaar Properties in Dubai. The final height of the tower will be revealed on its completion.

With a development value of over US$1 billion, Burj Dubai, when completed, will fulfil all the criteria of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), which ranks the world’s tallest buildings on the basis of spire height, the highest occupied floor, roof height and pinnacle height.

At a current height of over 800 metres (2,625 ft), Burj Dubai has now also scaled over 160 levels, the most number of storeys in any building in the world. Burj Dubai has already surpassed the height of the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota, USA – 628.8 metres (2,063 ft), which held the distinction of being the world’s tallest man-made structure. Burj Dubai is taller than Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which at 508 metres (1,667 ft) has held the tallest-building-in-the-world title since it opened in 2004. The tower also surpassed the 31-year-old record of CN Tower, which at 553.33 metres (1,815.5 ft) has been the world’s tallest free-standing structure on land since 1976.

Leveraging on the advancements in construction engineering, Burj Dubai undertook height enhancement in 2008 and is also upgrading its interior finishes. International designers from California have revisited the designs to make the residences more attractive and functionally superior.

More than 11,000 consultants and skilled construction workers are employed on site, and the world’s fastest high-capacity construction hoists, with a speed of up to 2 m/sec (120 metres/min), were used to move men and materials.

When completed, the tower will have used 330,000 cubic metres of concrete, 39,000 metric tons of steel rebar and 142,000 sq m of glass and 22 million man hours.

The weight of the empty building is 500,000 tonnes.

Burj Dubai’s structure has employed the latest advances in wind engineering, structural engineering, structural systems, construction materials and construction methods. It has a high performance exterior cladding system to withstand the harsh summer temperatures.

Not saying these are all great examples even if the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) thought so enough to make the video. We’re not privy to the design briefs so treat as something to think around.

AILAnationaloffice 13 February 2009
Showcasing Melbourne landscape architecture and the diversity of practice. Melbourne was the hosting city for the AILA’s 2009 national conference.